Part 3

Dean stopped answering his phone altogether. He got his voicemails but one ran into another. Bottles blurred state lines. Staying ahead of evil and the FBI was the only thing driving him. He knew it was a downward spiral. He knew that it would get him killed. He'd never call this life easy. Every single hunt could be his last because it took only one mistake, one moment of hesitation at the wrong moment.

--

Dean stumbled into the room and grabbed the bottle from his duffel and chugged. He went out to the bar when that bottle was empty. He was stewed and he knew it but the alcohol still had a ways to go to burn off the adrenaline and fear. Mostly fear.

The nearest warm body that would take him home. That's all he needed to get the poison out of his system. The adrenaline fizzled out while she was on top of him. The movement of their bodies made him nauseous. It took all his strength to get her off so that she could move and he could get to the bathroom and vomit up everything he'd drunk and eaten in the last two days.

The bottle blond kicked him out the minute he'd cleaned himself up. It was just as well, he wouldn't want to wake up next to that anyway. Stumbling his way back to the motel, he felt nothing but cold and empty.

--

One week in who knows where. Dean shacked up with an okay-looking waitress who'd had her kids young and had them run away young as well. She was a brunette with a little silver in her hair. Let Dean eat her food and drink her booze so long as he fixed her car and made her come a few times a night.

Dean wandered around the little apartment to look at the pictures of little boys and a girl. They all looked like their mother. Lawanda just sipped her coffee at the table. "Roberta. She's still in town. Married to a lowlife and won't speak to me."

"Pretty girl."

"Yep. Tony and Gerald both run off to LA… heard Tony's in Seattle, now. Both doing okay." She eyed him. "You got kids?"

"Daughter in college." He shrugged.

"Wow, straight and narrow, huh. Here I thought you were one of my kind."

"Only met her twice."

"Ah, the catch, I should have waited."

"I think she kind of hates me." Dean pulled his phone out and frowned. "She hasn't called me in a while."

"They will turn on you." She laughed to herself. When she laughed that way, Dean could see the young woman she must have been. Soft smiles and flirting over the counter top. "Got any pictures?"

"No." He lied. "Looks like me, though… Poor girl."

"If she's half as pretty as her daddy, then she's a heart breaker."

Dean knew that tone of voice. Lawanda was getting attached. He opened his mouth to say something but he spotted the little girl from next door. She was sitting in the gutter again. She had told him that there was a monster in her room at night. Dean had done his best to find out but nothing in the building or on her family suggested monsters or ghosts. He nearly started when he realized that Lawanda was standing next to him, watching little Jenny. "You know her?"

"Yeah, I know her." Lawanda nodded, wrapping an arm around his waist and hooking her chin on his shoulder. "I heard she told you about the monster in her room."

"She tell a lot of people about it?"

"Nah… Just a few… but not one of us can do a damn thing without any proof." He tilted his head at that then turned to face her. "Dean, it's not a monster from stories. I would bet my life that that little girl's monster is her father."

Dean saw red. He went deaf. Full on spaced it. The next thing he knew, he was standing on Jenny's father's neck with a gun pointed between his eyes. "If you ever touch that girl again, you will see me again. If you can't keep your hands off her, you take that girl next door to Lawanda and you disappear or I swear to all I hold holy that I will know if you ever touch another little girl again and I will be there to end you."

Dean left the building and went to a bar. When he had drowned all the anger and hatred that he could, he went back to Lawanda's to get his things. Lawanda was sitting up at the kitchen table. No coffee. No beer. She picked at a napkin for about ten minutes before she looked up at him with tears in her eyes. "What did you do?"

"What are you talking about?"

"You stormed out of here and I heard a scuffle. Then I didn't hear nothing for a long time. Then Jenny tells me that her daddy's gone and she's all by herself." She stared at him with a look he'd known most of his life. "I got her here with me for tonight… I want you to tell me what you did with him."

"Well, I didn't kill him if that's what you think. I should have but I didn't. I let the rat bastard live. You just… take care of her like she was yours." Dean walked past her to the bedroom to begin collecting his things. Jenny was curled around a pillow, sleeping peacefully. She was a pretty little girl. She opened her eyes when she felt him staring at her. "I was just leaving, Jenny. Go back to sleep."

"It's okay. No monsters in L-wanda's house." Jenny shut her eyes and went back to sleep. Dean sat on the edge of the bed to watch her sleep. To brush the hair out of her face. To pull the covers over her shoulder. He never even felt Lawanda enter the room.

"You would have made a great dad, Dean. That girl don't know what she missed out on." She ran her hands through his hair.

"Yeah, she does. Her stepdad was pretty great, I guess."

"I thought you had killed him. He deserved it but I don't know that I like sharing beds with killers." She whispered to him. "So… what? Now you're leaving me with her and we're never going to see you again."

"Probably."

"Is it worth it? What you're running from?" She cupped his face in her hands. "I don't believe in marriage these days but I think I could treat you right. Make us a little family. You, me and the girl. Is staying here with me so terrible that you'd rather wander around for the rest of your life?"

"No. Wouldn't be terrible." Dean shook his head. "My sister-in-law would pay you money to make me stay but even she knows that I have to go. That asshole is gone tonight. Drinking off his shame but when he comes to, he's calling the cops out on me. They're gonna know I was here and I do no one any good locked up in a cell for the rest of my natural life. So, tomorrow, bright and early. You talk to her and you make her understand that she has to tell the CPS agent the truth."

"It's DFS in this state."

"Whatever. You just make sure he never gets her back." Dean stood up, allowed himself one last kiss, one last hug and walked out of her apartment. He didn't stop driving for two days. Then he crashed into a motel bed that smelled like mothballs and didn't wake up for another two days.

TBC